"It seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that fun was had. Photographs document sequences of consuption caried on outside the view of family, friends, neighbors. (...) Taking photographs fills the same need for the cosmopolitans accumulating photograph-thophies(...).

A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenier. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of desorientation that are likely to be exarcebated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselfs and whatever is remarkeble that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic - Germans, Japanese, and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation to work: they can take pictures."

Susan Sontang, On Photography, 1971

Recentemente fui viajar. Fazer turismo na verdade. E fui confrontada com uma decisão: andar a tirar fotografias de tudo o que via, dos edifícios iconográficos e de peças expostas ou viver as experiências com o prejuizo de que tirar fotografias enquanto se aprecia, sei lá, uma sopa vietnamita, não acrescenta nada às sensações que compõem o degustar. Curiosamente comprei este pequeno e luminoso ensaio de Susan Sontang nessa viagem tendo apenas começado a ler no avião que me retornou a Portugal.

Ainda assim, fiz uma escolha de compromisso, andei a fotografar uma ou outra referência turística (e sim, a comida), mas também as ruas e as pessoas. E existitam alguns momentos, tão gigantescos, em que simplesmente me esqueci de que tinha uma  câmara. Nada há como viver.

Sublinhados da minha autoria